Marion County, Tennessee
Marion County is a county in Tennessee. The population of the county is 28,237. Major roads Interstate 24 US Route 41 US Route 72 Tennessee State Route 27 Tennessee State Route 28 Tennessee State Route 108 Tennessee State Route 156 Tennessee State Route 283 Tennessee State Route 377 Geography Adjacent counties Hamilton County (east) Grundy County (north) Sequatchie County (northeast) Jackson County, Alabama (south) Dade County, Georgia (southeast) Franklin County (west) Demographics As of the 2010 U.S. Census, the racial composition of the county is: 93.85% White (26,500) 3.25% Black or African American (917) 2.90% Other (820) 15.3% (4,320) of Marion County residents live below the poverty line. Theft rate statistics Marion County has below average rates of Pokemon theft and murder. The county reported 7 Pokemon thefts in 2018, and averages 0.85 murders a year. Pokemon Communities Cities New Hope - 1,082 South Pittsburg - 2,992 Whitwell - 1,699 Towns Jasper - 3,279 Kimball - 1,395 Monteagle - 1,192 (partly in Grundy County) Orme - 126 Powells Crossroads - 1,322 Unincorporated communities Aetna Haletown Mineral Springs Sequatchie Suck Creek Whiteside Climate Fun facts * During the spring of 1861, early in the American Civil War, Robert Cravens of Chattanooga began mining saltpeter, the main ingredient of gunpowder, at Nickajack Cave. The operation was soon taken over by the Confederate Niter Bureau. At one point, Nickajack Cave was one of the main sources of saltpeter for the Confederate States of America. However, its operation was halted in late 1862. Nickajack Cave was visited by thousands of soldiers of both side troops, who travelled up and down the Tennessee River on steamboats. Another important mine during the Civil War was Monteagle Saltpeter Cave, located in Cave Cove, about 4 miles (6.4 km) southeast of Monteagle. During the war, it was officially referred to as Battle Creek Cave. A 1917 visitor reported that about 25 or 30 old hoppers still remained in the cave. * Hales Bar Dam, built on the Tennessee River in Marion County between 1905 and 1913, was one of the first major dams constructed in the United States across a navigable stream. in the 1960s, the Tennessee Valley Authority replaced Hales Bar with Nickajack Dam, further downstream in the 1960s, though the Hales Bar powerhouse still stands as a boathouse. * Prior to 2004, Marion County was a Democratic-leaning swing county in presidential elections, backing the national winner in all but five elections from 1912 to 2004. Since then, it has become increasingly Republican similar to the rest of rural Tennessee, with Republican presidential candidates winning by increasing margins in each election from 2004 on. Donald Trump won the county in 2016 by a margin of nearly 45 points, the widest in the county's electoral history from 1912 on for a candidate of any party. * Orme was a coal mining town in the early 20th century that went into sharp decline after the major mining operations were shut down following a miners' strike in 1939. The wooden railroad depot is one of the few buildings remaining from the town's mining heydey. * The county's lone Walmart is located in Kimball, and the town also has a few hotels and some fast food, Lowe's Home Improvement and Tractor Supply Co., along with a Cracker Barrel and a Shoney's. It also has one of the few A&W locations in Tennessee. * Originally known as Antioch, New Hope incorporated in 1974 to avoid an annexation attempt by South Pittsburg, which most of the new city's residents opposed. The name "New Hope" was taken from a local church and cemetery. * A steel arch bridge known as the Shelby A. Rhinehart Memorial Bridge connects Tennessee State Route 156 from South Pittsburg to New Hope. * New Hope is home to the Maple View Public Use Area, located adjacent to Nickajack Cave Wildlife Refuge and home to federally endangered bats. In one evening in June 2019, representatives from Tennessee Valley Authority and Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency counted 97,026 bats leaving to feed and returning to the cave. * Whitwell was incorporated as a city in 1956, having grown as a mining town due to the abundance of coal in the mountains near the town. In 1981 there was a major mining accident when 13 coal miners were killed in an explosion. A full list of the names of those killed in the mine explosion is on a monument at Whitwell High School. Whitwell also has an annual Labor Day celebration that has been celebrated for over 50 consecutive years. * Whitwell has become renowned for the Paper Clips Project, a Holocaust memorial and educational project, that was carried out by children of the local middle school starting in 1998. A subsequent documentary was made about the children's achievement. This project started because students at the local middle school wanted to visually grasp how much six million was. The students started collecting paper clips, one for every Jew who was murdered in the Holocaust during World War II. This project soon attracted media attention and international support. Many Jewish notables sent paper clips representing lost members of their families. The children collected well over the number of paper clips they wanted (11 million, representing all noncombatant prisoners---Jew and Gentile---killed by the Nazis). The total collected number of paper clips now stands between ten and fifty million. This number is approximately equal to the total number of war deaths between 1939-1945. The rail car that appears in the movie is original rolling stock, actually used to transport Jews to the concentration camps. This rail car is located at the Whitwell Middle School. The Middle School routinely hosts Holocaust survivors as well as other guest speakers on the subject of the Holocaust. * In 1779 Cherokee chief Dragging Canoe moved down the Tennessee River from Chickamauga Creek to Running Water creek, and he helped establish the town of Nickajack at the entrance of Nickajack Cave. In 1794, the town was attacked and burned by militiamen commanded by Colonel James Orr of Nashville, Tennessee. The town was rebuilt and the Chickamauga Indians continued to live here until 1838, when all of the remaining Indians were removed from Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia by the Trail of Tears. Category:Tennessee Counties